Setting the stage: the making of a Roman province -- Rabbis in Palestine: texts, origins, development -- The formation of a provincial religious movement -- Provincial arbitration: cases and rabbinic authority -- Romanization and its discontents: rabbis and provincial culture -- Epilogue: rabbis in Palestine, fifth to eighth centuries -- Appendix: rabbinic cases
Summary
Conventionally, the history of the rabbinic movement has been told as an intra-Jewish development. Lapin reconfigures that history, drawing attention to the extent to which rabbis participated in and were the product of a Roman and late-antique political economy